NTMBK, I also looked at less expensive AM3+ mbs. You could get one for @$55-70 and add new ram to keep the price under $100. However, be prepared to reinstall Windows. Not as bad as it sounds. Make sure whatever mb you choose allows you the chance to unlock your 960T. It may or may not, luck of the draw. If you are ultimately thinking of upgrading to a high end Bulldozer/PileDriver maker sure you buy a better MB that has a solid phase control. My Sabertooth 990FX is probably overkill for what you might want to spend but is allows me to really OC the 8150.

Because that would be considerably more expensive, and I have no need to do it.

Did you actually read my post? The upgrade to AM3+ would let me get more than 4GB RAM, at much higher speeds. It would let me overclock my processor. It would let me unlock an additional two cores on my processor. That's not "almost nothing", and definitely not bad for less than the cost of an i3.

Where exactly in your post did you say ANYTHING about prices? Your question was, should you upgrade to AM3? And my answer was no cause there is no point in "upgrading" to something that will not net you much. I doubt you would notice much of a difference from DDR2 to DDR3, aside from the fact that its cheaper, but that still means that you have to drop money into more RAM. Unlocking to 6 cores isn't going to do a damn thing cause there are only a handful if programs out there that ACTUALLY USE more than 2 cores anyways, so that's a mute point.. The overclocking might help slightly, but you gotta wonder how well a $50 motherboard will be able to overclock.. Not to mention the fact that you will need to ALSO spend money on aftermarket cooling.. - so no, you will not notice much of a difference AT ALL in games, much less in every day tasks..

All in all, with a decent motherboard ($100), new aftermarket cooling ($30) and new ram ($40) you are already pretty high up there. While switching to an intel system would surely be more expensive, you are basically throwing $170 away for what? More PCIe/sata slots?

All in all, with a decent motherboard ($100), new aftermarket cooling ($30) and new ram ($40) you are already pretty high up there. While switching to an intel system would surely be more expensive, you are basically throwing $170 away for what? More PCIe/sata slots?

Your advice is poor. The limitations listed in the OP do not require a $100 board. They would be addressed entirely by a $60-70 board like I linked. I have a 960T unlocked to six cores and overclocked to 3.3GHz on stock volts with the stock sink. A CM TX3 can be had for less than $20 if OP wants more aggressive clocks and the going rate for an 8GB kit is $30. That sums to $150 max and $90 min, with the cheapest solution addressing all of OP's concerns. OP said nothing about CPU limitations. The i3s would be a sidegrade only to a four core 960T. The i5s by themselves would cost nearly $100 more than the solution that I suggested.

Please read OPs and familiarize yourself with hardware before posting such awful advice.

Piledriver is set to come out OCT 23 (next week) according to rumors, and the 8 core FX 8350 will be priced at $199, which I think is really good deal compared to what Bulldozer was priced at release. Piledriver will be only about 10-15% faster than bulldozer, but that's not that bad, because it will be as fast as the ivyb i5s,except the trade off will be more cores, for lack of single threaded performance. So I say if you're set with AMD, now would be a good time to upgrade. It will certainly be a significant improvement over your phenom iix4. However, you definitely need to spend some extra money for some ddr3 ram and aftermarket cooling as well. So it's looking less like an upgrade, and more like a new system in itself.

I would look out for a decent board (AM3 or AM3+) for a bargain basement price (new or a very promising used board). If you don't see one, save for a bigger upgrade.

Apart from the (increasingly rare and was occasional to begin with) 'front USB connect = freeze' scenario that a lot of people are having with the ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 board url, I'm happy with it. The last time my system hung as a result of this was about a year or more ago and I use the front USB ports fairly regularly.

Is it worth blowing $150 give or take, not counting putting in the higher dollar AMD CPU's, for 6 months of performance increase?

Because, after 6 months, the money you put in now and enjoying for those 6 months, in addition to whatever you could sell your current rig parts for in 6 months, is going to buy you Haswell, which is going to eat your newly upgraded AMD rig alive.

I've been an AMD guy for a long time, and I'm running and AM3+ board (brother also) presently. But when Haswell hits and the price raping comes down, I'm moving to it. Facts are facts, Intel is slaughtering AMD in the desktop CPU world, especially when it comes to gaming.

My feeling is a new board gets you where you want to go, especially as you have a processor for the old board.
Question is do you want a minimalist board that offers what you ask for or an overclockkers board?
Except in specific circumstances the Phenom II X6 is close enough to an FX-8350 to wait for an upgrade until you need one.

Assuming you have an X8 pcie 2.0 x8 slot available I still think you should get a used IBM m1015 raid controller, and a SATA III SSD. The M1015 are the low end SATA/SAS 6gb/s contoller that come with lots of servers, so they often get removed and it is very easy to find them.
You would probably get better performance than if you used the south bridge controller on a new motherboard as well as being able to run SAS drives and you can take it to any new motherboard you buy later.

Memory is the other thing you could upgrade fairly easily, although it is slightly trickier being as its hard to find high performance high density DDR2 these days. It is not impossible though.

Besides graphics card, those are the weaknesses on your current system. I wouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater just yet, an AM3 motherboard just doesn't offer enough improvement over your current set up in my opinion, unless of course your current motherboard doesn't have a free PCIe2.0 8x slot, and your motherboard doesn't play nice with high density fast ddr2.

Both board accept the new Vishera CPUs, are nicely layed out, great features, low price.

I currently have the ASUS M4A77D that is serving me well for nearly 2 years now. Great board, stable, fast, cheap and feature full.

Sure the extremist and overclokers will say get a 990FX chipset. But depending on your needs and budget, a chipset 970 or 990X would get you where you want to go and be able to get a Piledriver chip and maybe a Steamroller CPU if AMD is true to their words (...).

I'm pretty sure from his posts he's not looking at being a hardcore gaming rig. He probably just wants to squeeze as much as possible out of what he already has. I believe a new MOBO and DDR3 RAM would be the right direction. To build a new system isn't warranted if at most you do is general task and some occasional light gaming if any at all ( ----> 7770).

In short, If you're a fan of AMD, running Phenom II,and don't really rely of single threaded applications, then yes, I think AM3+ is worth it for Vishera and will be able to handle Steamroller as well as a future upgrade.

BUT...

I think you might want wait a bit before buying, if you can, as AMD will be releasing a new chipset soon, the 1090fx. The 990fx,which is AMD's current high end chip set is aging as it was released with the introduction of bulldozer, so I'm expecting AMD will bring out some new chipset tuned for Piledriver before the end of 2012. Although it will probably not make night and day difference in performance, it's just something you may want to consider.

only 2 SATA2 ports, so I can't add any more drives
-2 DDR2 DIMM sockets, realistically limiting me to 4GB RAM as the cost of 4GB DIMMs of DDR2 is utterly extortionate
-no core unlocking- my CPU is a Thuban die, meaning it is a hexacore with two locked cores. This could potentially be a six core processor on the right mobo, if I'm lucky.
-no user-adjustable CPU voltages, meaning I effectively cannot OC my processor at all. (When I try even a minor OC, it sets the voltages insanely high automatically)
-running out of PCI slots- my graphics card takes two slots, my wifi card takes another, and I only have one left to play with, meaning I can't add both a sound card and a new SATA controller
-PCIe Gen1 - meaning that my graphics card could potentially be bandwidth bottlenecked

Is that better? It ain't personal, but why does it have to be? He has stated exactly what he wants in a new board. Some would say he has made it easier this way.